Ray Ison, Professor in Systems at the UK Open University since 1994, is a member of the Applied Systems Thinking in Practice Group. From 2008-15 he also developed and ran the Systemic Governance Research Program at Monash University, Melbourne. In this blog he reflects on contemporary issues from a systemic perspective.

Friday, November 29, 2013

We have been shareholders of Hepburn Wind, a community-based renewables cooperative since inception. Hepburn have just had their AGM and released this report. Lots of good developments threatened unfortunately by the changing policy context.

"On Saturday 23 November we held our AGM
at the Daylesford Secondary School theatre and are most grateful to the
100+ members who showed up and participated in the official business of
running our co-operative. We also had a good additional crowd show up to
hear the keynote address by Professor Tim Flannery.

With Tony Gill and Simon Holmes à Court co-chairing the meeting we managed to successfully pass a number of special resolutions, present the 2012/13 annual report and share ideas with and answer questions from our members.

Members ratified the election of Candy Broad and Daniel Magasanik
to the board. We are looking forward to Daniel’s second term and to
welcoming Candy and her unique skills and experience. At the AGM we took
the opportunity to farewell and thank Dan Cass who retired having
served a full three year term on the board.

Professor
Tim Flannery gave a compelling presentation updating us on the latest
climate science developments and the work of the new Climate Council.
Tim commended our community for our local response to the challenge and
the leadership we have shown.

Aaron van Egmond, CEO of the Hepburn Shire, updated members about council’s renewable energy plans and our energy partner Red Energy explained our joint retail offering, the Community Saver. We were also pleased to host representatives from both VicWind and Yes2Renewables — two important groups who do great work in supporting and educating communities in the area of wind energy.

Carbon tax repeal submission

When our community committed to building
its own wind farm, we knew we'd have a lot of challenges to overcome.
But with each of the major parties committed (at the time) to both
making carbon polluters pay and growing the clean energy sector, we knew
we could count on our leaders to provide a favourable policy
environment.

Or so we thought.

Changes in Canberra are radically
shifting the goalposts for clean energy and for our co-operative. Just
18 months after big polluters started having to pay for dumping carbon
pollution into our atmosphere, Australia is on the cusp of unwinding
these important environmental gains.

Our members are watching the proposed legislative repeal with great concern and last week we made a submission
to the Senate Standing Committees on Environment and Communications’
Clean Energy Legislation (Carbon Tax Repeal) Bill 2013. We have
explained the likely impact of the repeal on our project and ultimately
on our community. We encourage members and supporters to read our submission.

Along with the millions of Australians
who are investors in renewable energy infrastructure through their
superannuation funds and the thousands of Australians who work in the
clean energy sector, the members of Hepburn Wind have a reasonable
expectation that changes in government policy will not harm their
interests.

Hepburn Wind farm was built by our
community for the benefit of our community. The repeal of the Carbon
Pricing Mechanism introduces a significant sovereign risk to the member
investors of our co-operative."

"Argyris
and Schon (1974) assert that people hold maps in their heads about
how to plan, implement and review their actions. They
further assert that few people are aware that the maps they use
to take action are not the theories they explicitly
espouse. Also, even fewer people are aware of the maps
or theories they do use (Argyris, 1980).To clarify, this is not
merely the difference between what people say and do.
Argyris and Schon suggest that there is a theory consistent with
what people say and a theory consistent with what they do.
Therefore the distinction is not between "theory and action but
between two different "theories of action" (Argyris, Putnam
& McLain Smith, 1985, p.82). Hence the concepts Espoused
theory and Theory-in-use:

Espoused
theory

The world view
and values people believe their behaviour is based on

Theory-in-use

The world view
and values implied by their behaviour, or the maps they use
to take action"

Based on: Anderson, L. (1994). Espoused
theories and theories-in-use: Bridging the gap (Breaking
through defensive routines with organisation development
consultants). Unpublished Master of Organisational
Psychology thesis, University of Qld.

Unfortunately few individuals have the courage of their convictions when it comes to acting ethically in response to human-induced climate change. Ian Dunlop is a notable exception. He is to be congratulated for taking on mining heavy-weight BHP/BHP-Billiton. In the process he has demonstrated how unethical major institutional investors still are in managing their portfolios and how much into groupthink the big miners are. Dunlop’s platform for nomination to the BHP board identified climate change as the single greatest strategic risk faced by BHP. In making his unsuccesful bid for election he said:

"The
future prosperity of BHP Billiton is of great importance, both in
Australia and globally,” ......"Climate
change poses a major strategic risk to that prosperity, and to
shareholder value that is a risk which has the ability to fundamentally
alter the direction of the company, or indeed to destroy it."In
common with the boards of most major global corporations, I believe the
board has fallen into the trap of 'groupthink' in failing to grasp the
enormity of the challenge that climate change poses to the business,”